Driving home tonight, not thirty minutes from now, witnessed a tall guy in white and blond (bleached) hair get arrested by some cops, two patrol cars were there, in front of the Big Four. This is the bar at the base of the Huntington Hotel, at Taylor and California, across from Grace Cathedral. The mind races. What could he have been doing? Singing Barry Manilow off-tune? Purse snatching some Junior Leaguers?

No one seems to know where he came from, perhaps a lost pet or research animal? Padilla reports the animal to be very friendly, so assumptions are that he was somewhat domesticated. Regardless, plans are to send the furry little creature to a primate sanctuary in Texas.

Tonight I was invited to Sera Beak’s release party for her awesome new (and first!) book, The Red Book. She’s my friend Mark‘s partner, and it was terrific to see them both — and it was a packed, very successful launch event. What’s even better is that her book looks to be a really great one: I run, flop about and generally want to claw my eyes out when I see sex and spirituality combined (allergic to hippies), but this book is rockin’ it — with chapter titles like “Sacred Lipstick and Cosmic Lattes” and subheads like “Who’s Your Daddy (or Mommy)?” and full-on endorsements of vibrator use as a girl’s cosmic duty, Sera’s got a hit on her hands. Yay! I photoblogged the opening at Propeller in Hayes Valley after the jump.

Image: Sera Beak signing a copy of her book for Rob Brezny. (Interestingly, Brezny is an SRL fan. He asked what the symbol on my necklace meant, and I said, “Brass knuckles. It’s my astrological sign.” He laughed.)(more…)

My sum opinion of this play is that, despite having very low expectations, I was impressed, because of the sheer beauty of the orchestral pieces. The ballet bits? Not my style. As my guest Tink said: “If I close my eyes, I like it a lot.”

Funny quote from a guy walking down the aisle: “You didn’t know Joan of Arc was a love story, did you?”(more…)

It seems that on tuesday around 4am at Turk and Leavenworth, three guys with guns — one a sawed-off shotgun — tried to rob someone who was unlucky enough to be at the wrong place at the wrong time in the Tenderloin. Except the intended victim, when openly threatened with the shotgun, pulled out a gun of their own and shot all three would-be assailants. According to witnesses, six shots were fired, and news reports confirm that all three robbers were wounded, none fatally. I think this story is incredibly interesting. No one knows who the non-victim was. Could it be that we now have our own Bernie Goetz here in SF?

Chatting with workers at the Bay St. Trader Joe’s, and all the buzz was about how Bob’s Sushi across the street was in a huge smackdown with the Fish & Game folks. I guess they had been selling abalone illegally. CBS is covering it, probably for today’s news.
My understanding was that “sport fished” abalone was OK to sell, but not commercially fished, because commercially fishing abalone is really regulated. I guess places like this import from Mexico. Neighbor is an abalone specialist, hopefully he will chime in soon with a comment on the capture of Bob. I think of abalone diving as a classic southern Californian activity, like sitting on the beach reading Austen classics or long octopus barbecue evenings. TJ worker who was serving samples told me she had been diving for abalone in Novato, which surprised me becuase besides Bodega Bay, didn’t think we had any waters that were good for fishing/diving.

Speaking of fishing, if I had a dollar for every family I’ve seen tossing crab cages off Aquatic Park pier…(more…)

Hello dear readers! I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you about a new feature that I banged out this morning for our little network here. We now have individual RSS feeds for each author on every one of our cities. If you don’t know what RSS is or if you don’t care then feel free to move onto the next story, but if you are an RSS junkie then this one is for you! Now when you go to any author bio, like mine for instance, there is a new link that will let you subscribe to a feed of just my posts. Are there some bloggers here that you love and others not so much? Or maybe you like everyone but really don’t want to miss posts by a certain few, or maybe you love the SF site in it’s entirety (we’re assuming that’s the case) but also have one person in LA, two people in New Orleans, and a friend in Chicago that you like reading as well – well now you can choose to just read their posts. This has been a long standing request, and it’s something we’re super psyched to announce. Enjoy!

This morning I hadn’t even gotten out of my neighborhood when I realized that I had forgotten my coffee. Fortunately I was near ‘Elvas Coffee Stop” on Lincoln Ave. in Willow Glen. A shop I had heard of but hadn’t had the opportunity to visit. Elva’s is the kind of place where everybody knows your name, or at least Elva does.

Elva and Frank recently returned from Maui with 100% Kona Beans. This Friday, June 30th, will be Kona Friday at Elva’s Coffee Stop. The kona will start brewing at 5:30am.

I am excited for three reason: First, it’s free, and we all love free. Second, it is outside, and we all love being outside. And third, this isn’t a full-fledged opera, but rather a concert. I like this because it means they’ll just sing the pretty songs and we don’t have to wait through all of the singing-talking story part of the opera to hear them. Plus, you’ll get to hear songs from different operas.

Bring blankets and low chairs, but don’t bother with food. They are making you buy it there.